joshroby.com - Publishinghttp://joshroby.com/taxonomy/term/12/0
Posts about the art, craft, science, and headache that is publishing.enJosh and Deadlineshttp://joshroby.com/node/336
<p>So once upon a time, I used to work at a Big Publishing House that made textbooks, which have crazy-tight and crazy-serious deadlines. And as I learned most of my publishing process there, deadlines being really fucking serious business got firmly entrenched in how I do things.</p>
<p>I don't miss deadlines.</p>
<p>And blowing a deadline for me is the shortest route possible to never working for me again, full stop, no exceptions, no joke. You've demonstrated that you are not reliable at gauging your own time, your own process, your own life, and you're not taking responsibility for the choices you make and how you communicate with the people you work with. And there are so many other fish in the sea that I don't need to put up with that from you, ever again.</p>
<p><em>However…</em></p>
<p>The email saying, "Hey, I won't be able to make my upcoming deadline," that's fine. That does not set the emergency lights spinning and the klaxons wailing. That email is, in fact, awesome.</p>
<p>That email, which is sent as soon as you know a deadline is going to be a problem, keeps me in the loop, lets me make informed decisions, and shows that you're taking responsibility for whatever the problem is, whether it's a schedule oversight or a life-and-death hospital emergency. That email, which also should include a revised deadline, lets me adjust my plans <em>now</em>, while I have lead time, instead of three days after the day I was expecting to get work back from you.</p>
<p>That email is how professionals and equals communicate, and I probably respect you more, not less, when I get it. Because we all know shit happens, the important thing is how you deal with it.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/336#commentsPublishingWed, 07 Mar 2012 17:58:26 +0000joshroby336 at http://joshroby.comHow to Publish to the iPad iBookstore (Part 1)http://joshroby.com/node/269
<p>When I mentioned I was looking into how to publish my Rooksbridge stories to iPad's "iBookstore," Jeff Tidball asked me to, once I figured it out, share the answers. Thus, this post.</p>
<p>First of all, unlike <a href="http://dtp.amazon.com">Kindle's Digital Text Platform</a>, it's not as easy as going to a website and uploading an HTML file. Where Kindle is relatively open and "anybody" can publish there, Apple only allows a small number of "certified content aggregators" to publish to iBooks. Most of these are big publishing houses, but also in the list are <a href="http://www.lulu.com/apple-ipad-publishing">Lulu</a> and <a href="http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_ipad_ebooks">Smashwords</a>, both of which are self-publishing outfits. So if you want to publish to the iBookstore and you don't want to submit your manuscript, deal with house editors, get a book contract, and all that mess, you'll be using one of these two options.</p>
<p>My first choice was Lulu, which I had worked with before and which accepts files in ePub, an open format useful for other applications. However, Lulu's process does not, at this time, seem to work. Their ePub validation fails to validate files that clear other validators and does not return error messages. Their for-pay 'ePub Conversion Service' turns out files riddled with formatting errors. So they refuse your file, don't tell you why, offer to charge you money to do it themselves, and do it poorly on top of that. So I'll be investigating Smashwords tomorrow.</p>
<p>I'll write "Part 2" of this process soon; in the mean time, if you'd like to check out the ePub process or the first few layers of the Lulu process (before you hit the layer of <em>utter failure</em>), read on…</p>
<h3>ePub</h3>
<p>So the first step is turning your content into an .epub file. I've found <a href="http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/tutorial.asp">this great tutorial at jedisaber.com</a> which shows you how. All you need is a text editor and a .zip program*, because .epub is basically a set of XML and XHTML files inside a .zip archive that's just been renamed to .epub. The tutorial has a 'hollowed out' .epub file ready to use as a template**. I don't want to repeat every step that's in the tutorial, but the basic strokes are: dump your content into the chapterX.xhtml files (which is stupid-easy if you store your content in XML, which you should because of <em>this very thing</em>), update the index file with where to find what, and then enter all your metadata (author, publisher, etc). Then zip it back up and rename the .zip file into an .epub file.</p>
<p>As a side note, if you publish to Kindle as well, your .epub can use the same XHTML files that you upload to Amazon… and if you don't publish to Kindle, well, now you've got a suitable file, so <a href="http://dtp.amazon.com">go set up a new revenue stream</a>.</p>
<p>*What this tutorial will <em>not</em> tell you is you cannot use the Mac OS X built-in compression feature, because that function re-orders your files within the archive and adds invisible files that mux things up. After much frustration, I used <a href="">Springy</a>, a little utility that makes proper archives. And while we're on the topic of 'proper' archives, when you use Springy, make sure you add the mimetype file to the archive first and use the "Store (no compression)" option. Then dump in the rest using the "Deflate (standard)" option.</p>
<p>**The other thing is that the sample file available at the tutorial isn't quite up to spec. It may have been obsolesced by a new epub standard or something — I'm not researching <em>why</em> it fails, you can do that for extra credit, if you like — but the thing of it is that sample.epub fails validation for a handful of reasons. Its xhtml files must be resaved as UTF-16 text encoding, and content.opf's line 14 needs its media-type changed to "application/x-dtbncx+xml". Or you could just use <a href="http://kallistipress.com/downloads/epub/RB001_Dirty_Work.epub">my file</a> as a template.</p>
<p>You will want to validate your ePub, and there is a <a href="http://www.threepress.org/document/epub-validate/">handy web app</a> from Threepress Consulting that will check it for you. Apple will have its own validation process that checks this and a few other things, so make sure your file is clean here before proceeding.</p>
<h3>Lulu</h3>
<p>Publishing to iBooks through Lulu is relatively straightforward, with two caveats (besides it not, you know, <em>working</em>). The first is that Lulu will slap its own ISBN onto your iBooks ebook (that seems redundant…). This means that the publisher of record, at least as far as ISBN is concerned, will be Lulu. On the up side, this ISBN is only for the ebook version, and Lulu will "give" you the ISBN for free (whereas Bowker will charge you a chunk of change). The second caveat is that Lulu only accepts .epub files for publishing to iBooks (could be worse: Smashwords only accepts .doc), which are notoriously difficult to produce well (and very easy to produce poorly).</p>
<p>Lulu has been doing the self-publishing for years, so it's got its ducks in a row. You start a new eBook project, you upload your ePub, you set some metadata (for some reason all iBook prices need to end in .99), and then it wants a cover image. I already have cover images set up for rooksbridge.com and for print production, but of course these weren't the right size. One quick crop later, and I uploaded the cover file (and turned off their text-overlay of the title and author). Lastly, you click the prominently displayed check box labeled "iBooks Distribution Service."</p>
<p>…except there is no such check box.</p>
<p>While their "we do iBooks" page is flashy and slick and looks like they've got their shit together, well… the truth of the matter is that it's still a new service and there's a guy at Lulu that's got to flip some bits for you. You'll find this out if you dig through the Lulu Knowledge Base to find the <a href="https://support.lulu.com/View.jsp?procId=4c8deca3868a81c929e8f21e48a8a836&amp;from=Browse_793361f7ef9efa85a4c635efb02d4337">How to get your book in Apple's iBookstore (Authors)</a> article. Yes, it's another tutorial.</p>
<p>Luckily, this one is short. The skinny is: set up an ebook with the handy-dandy ebook wizard (which is relatively straightforward) and then <a href="https://www.lulu.com/content/service/epub-ibookstore-distribution-submission-service/8590219">"buy" this free product</a>. Putting this product (which is "free for a limited time") into your cart adds you to a queue, and one of Lulu's people will contact you by email in "two business days."</p>
<p>I got my response the day after I "bought" the submission service. The email reminded me that the ebook needed to pass ePub validation and asked for the Lulu ID number of the project I wanted submitted to the iBookstore. Presumably I might have other eBooks published through Lulu, and since the submission service is presently bound to my account and not a specific project, they need to know which to send. The email then advised me that the submission process might take <em>4 to 6 weeks</em> to complete. The kicker of course being that, if Apple refuses the file (which it reserves the right to do), Lulu won't actually tell me; I have to keep tabs on the iBookstore (which, without an iPad, is difficult…) and if my book doesn't appear, then I contact Lulu again.</p>
<p>Of course, this process ended with emails from Lulu claiming my files did not validate, not giving me any reason why they did not validate, and the "resolving the case" so I couldn't reply for more details. I did a little research on their own support forums and found this same story repeated over and over again. Perhaps someday Lulu will get their act together and become a conduit for self-published content making its way to the iBookstore; that day is not today.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/269#commentsPublishingTue, 25 May 2010 14:55:48 +0000joshroby269 at http://joshroby.com10 Words You Need to Stop Mispellinghttp://joshroby.com/node/264
<p><a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/misspelling/then.png" /><br />10 Words You Need to Stop <strike>Mispelling</strike> <strike>Misspeling</strike> Misspelling</a></p>
http://joshroby.com/node/264#commentsPublishingWed, 31 Mar 2010 14:08:54 +0000joshroby264 at http://joshroby.comNow on Kindle: FLFS Fiction and Rooksbridgehttp://joshroby.com/node/253
<p>So one of the things I like to do to amuse myself is present my games in the medium of the day. For <em>Full Light, Full Steam</em>, this meant as excerpts from pamphlets, which were booming in the victorian era. For <em>Sons of Liberty</em>, this meant a newspaper-like format, although I decided not to cram everything down to 8pt like the colonial papers of the time. It's something that I doubt anybody notices, but it keeps me entertained. </p>
<p>One of the unforeseen advantages of my approach, though, was that it left me with a lot of steampunk "pamphlets" full of colorful descriptions of a fictional solar system and short-short stories of the people who call it home. Content I might be able to use in other ways. For instance, I've had a "Spirit of the Full Light Full Steam Century" project on my hard drive for years that I never quite complete. Recently, though, as I've been putting <a href="http://rookbridge.com">Stories from Rooksbridge</a> onto Kindle, it occurred to me that this stuff might be of interest to folks all on their own: pamphlets of the digital age, as kindle minibooks.</p>
<p>There are three, and I fired them off into the intarwebs at 99 cents a piece:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Full-Light-Steam-Country-ebook/dp/B002TSAMY0/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1256585795&amp;sr=1-5">For Queen and Country</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Full-Light-Steam-Tourists-Solagraphy/dp/B002TSANBW/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1256585795&amp;sr=1-7">A Daring Tourist's Solagraphy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Full-Light-Steam-Laymans-ebook/dp/B002TSANIK/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1256585795&amp;sr=1-4">The Layman's Reports from the Royal Society</a></li>
</ul>
<p>And of course, I've got Rooksbridge available on Kindle, too, for the usual two-buck price:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rooksbridge-Dirty-Work-Stories/dp/B002TG4PMM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1256585795&amp;sr=1-1">Dirty Work</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rooksbridge-2-Getting-Stories/dp/B002TX74OQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1256585795&amp;sr=1-2">Getting By</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rooksbridge-3-Divide-Stories/dp/B002TX6ZBO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1256585795&amp;sr=1-3">The Divide</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rooksbridge-Ravens-Rooks-Crows-Stories/dp/B002TX6ZHS/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1256585795&amp;sr=1-6">Ravens, Rooks, and Crows</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Publishing to Kindle, it turns out, is dead-easy... as long as you have your content in an easily-accessible format, like XML or HTML. The above titles were approved for the Kindle store a couple days ago; when I went to check if they were live, they already had a couple sales on them. This with absolutely zero promotion, which is pretty neat. For <em>maybe</em> an hour's effort on my part, it's a nice little revenue stream that I don't really have to do much to manage. The percentage of revenues that gets back to me is less than awesome (35%), but in the grand scheme of things, that's 35% of revenue that I doubt I'd be tapping any other way.</p>
<p>So those of you who are Kindle-enabled: here's another way to get some tasty, tasty content from my corner of the world. Hope you enjoy!</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/253#commentsFull Light Full SteamKallisti Press NewsPublishingRooksbridgeMon, 26 Oct 2009 19:48:52 +0000joshroby253 at http://joshroby.comNow at Un-Storehttp://joshroby.com/node/250
<p>All my games and books are now available at <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/games/unstore/publisher/Kallisti_Press">the Kallisti Press Un-Store</a>!</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/250#commentsKallisti Press NewsPublishingWed, 14 Oct 2009 00:13:51 +0000joshroby250 at http://joshroby.comOcean - YouTube Trailerhttp://joshroby.com/node/234
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dGYrhygyMVk&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dGYrhygyMVk&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><p>
Jake Richmond is such a smarty.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/234#commentsOther People's GamesPublishingThu, 30 Jul 2009 23:15:04 +0000joshroby234 at http://joshroby.comRooksbridge Away!http://joshroby.com/node/230
<p>Files sent to printer. It's always a big and heart-stopping step when you send stuff out of your house and into the world. It becomes real (and starts incurring expenses), and there's always the little voice in the back of your head screaming not to do it, keep your head down, don't try or else you might fail. And I end up walking around all shaky and distracted for the rest of the day: was that a big mistake?</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/230#commentsKallisti Press NewsPublishingRooksbridgeWed, 08 Jul 2009 17:47:32 +0000joshroby230 at http://joshroby.comEighty Five!http://joshroby.com/node/229
<p><img src="http://kallistipress.com/images/rb/85.png" /></p>
<p>Seth recently asked if the blog would explode when the tower hit full. The answer is yes: explode in <em>awesomeness</em>. I will also, I think, get to take a nap. I've been pounding away on this project like mad to get it to completion. Most recently, XML has saved my ass and made a lot of things <em>lots</em> easier. There's nothing quite like laying out sixty pages by hitting an update button.</p>
<p>I'm presently looking at a launch date of August 1st. Fingers crossed...</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/229#commentsKallisti Press NewsPublishingMon, 06 Jul 2009 16:58:50 +0000joshroby229 at http://joshroby.comSixtyhttp://joshroby.com/node/228
<p><img src="http://kallistipress.com/images/rb/60.png" /></p>
<p>Progress...</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/228#commentsKallisti Press NewsPublishingTue, 30 Jun 2009 22:45:41 +0000joshroby228 at http://joshroby.comFortyhttp://joshroby.com/node/224
<p><img src="http://kallistipress.com/images/rb/40.png" /></p>
<p>As the mighty Fred Hicks might say: "I wonder what this means..."</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/224#commentsKallisti Press NewsPublishingThu, 28 May 2009 20:03:47 +0000joshroby224 at http://joshroby.comStar Trek, Star Trek, and America's Addiction to Being the Underdoghttp://joshroby.com/node/222
<p>So everybody's seen <em>Star Trek</em> by now, right? It was totally awesome, and really, just about everything that I would possibly want from a reboot of a very beloved franchise that I have spent a long time enjoying. Of course, you'll notice I said "just about everything." There's one thing, and it's not even a criticism of <em>Star Trek</em> so much as it's that the movie fell into the same trope that a lot — scratch that — nearly <em>every</em> movie, novel, television show, or other media production made in the Western World falls into.</p>
<p>So does anybody remember <em>Star Trek: Nemesis</em>? I mean, I'm sorry for bringing it up and making you think about it, but if you will recall, that Star Trek movie featured a giant, scary, pointy-ended Romulan ship dedicated to the destruction of the Federation and cast the comparatively underpowered Enterprise as the only line of defense opposing it. Sound familiar? Yeah.</p>
<p>There's just something, apparently, about the little guy standing up to the giant threat from beyond. And I'll be the first to admit, this makes for a great story. Unfortunately, in recent years, it's made for <em>the</em> great story, especially in Hollywood. Our hero is always inexperienced, overpowered, and outclassed, and yet somehow he comes out on top — and by somehow, I of course mean "by banding together his friends to outmaneuver and outmatch the overpowering threat." Every. Single. Time. Every. Single. Story.</p>
<!--break--><!--break--><h3>The US and the Underdog</h3>
<p>The United States of America has the underdog story written into its DNA. We like to tell ourselves that we won our independence by fighting off the terrible and overwhelming outside threat of the British army. Of course, there are two problems with this: firstly, it didn't actually happen that way, and secondly, that was a long time ago, and the US today is nothing like the thirteen colonies in our collective imagination. Now, I'm going to unpack that right now, but I get hella pedantic, so you might want to just skip to the next header. In any case, to unpack:</p>
<p>First off, the British were not the enemy from outside — they were us; we were them. The thirteen colonies were British colonies, peopled by British colonists, and while there were certainly valid and compelling arguments to secede, we have, on this side of two hundred years, turned the British into an Other, when in fact the shared culture between the colonies and the British Isles accounted for far more than their differences. The American Revolutionary War was a family blow-up where two brothers (or more accurately, a father and son) have a violent argument and then don't talk to each other for twenty years... and <em>we started it</em> by breaking laws and refusing legal (though unethical) searches. We weren't the victims of an unprovoked attack from outside our borders; we decided to draw a new border down the middle of the British Empire.</p>
<p>Secondly, the popular account of the Revolutionary War tends to forget our allies, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch (also known as <em>all of Western Europe</em> at the time)... and the <em>world war</em> they started in Europe that siphoned off British troops and supplies from the American front. We only won here because the British were fighting a much bigger war over there. Or to put a finer point on it, we only won because we were <em>less important</em> than the French, Spanish, and Dutch all trying to invade London at the same time. And then, through a number of historical factors that I won't go into here, after the wars were over, the newly-minted United States of America dropped their erstwhile allies like a hot potato. We didn't outmaneuver and outwit the big, bad redcoats... we outmaneuvered and outwitted the poor redcoats that got abandoned in the colonies while their friends fought in the real war.</p>
<p>Now, up till now, all that criticism really does is challenge the historical pertinence of the American myth. Which is to say, the artistically responsible thing to do in such a situation is to keep making movies and whatnot about this myth, but do so with a little subtlety, a dash of irony, and perhaps a touch of humility. The American Revolution is a glorious, fantastic piece of history, but it's way more interesting when it's nuanced with all those little facts and details that make it something other than a straight-up black-and-white conflict.</p>
<p>However, there's another problem with fetishizing our little national myth. In 1776, we were thirteen backwater colonies having a spat with Dad. In 2009, we are the last standing superpower, the leader of the free world, the engine of the global economy, and so on and so forth. We aren't the little guy any more. We just aren't. We are a nation that possesses frightening amounts of power — which is not to say power that we "shouldn't" have, but power that we must be very, very careful about using. At this level of power, it's <em>very</em> easy to make more problems than you solve — and the easiest way to do that is by swinging around our last-standing-superpower weight as if we were the scrappy little underdog out to take down the way-more-powerful Othered badguys. In the light of that reality, telling ourselves that we (and Captain Kirk) are the underdogs is not just wrong, it's <em>irresponsible</em>.</p>
<h3>Trek on the Small Screen</h3>
<p>So do you remember <em>Star Trek</em>? Like, the television show? Back when it was Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on a barely-decorated soundstage, there was us, the Federation, and there were the Klingons. These two states had big conflicts over their mutually-opposed points of view. (Romulans, on the other hand, were usually <em>over there</em> and only occasionally got on screen.) But the vast majority of the universe was populated by third parties: unaligned worlds who both the Federation and the Klingons wanted to sway to their side. Sound familiar? That's because the historical context of original Trek was deep in the midst of the Cold War, where NATO and the Warsaw Pact saw the globe as a chessboard of potential allies in the inevitable war on the horizon. Importantly, though, there's only one episode where the Federation and the Klingons are actually at war, and it's over by the end of the episode.</p>
<p>Additionally, the original Enterprise is only the underdog when it confronts the universe itself. That is, incomprehensibly powerful avatars of the unknowable infinite — guys who style themselves like Greek Gods and perform what is effectively magic. These guys are never representatives of nation-states, and they never come back (they would eventually be wrapped up into one character, Q, in TNG). When the Enterprise faced off with other nation-states, though, they were equals <em>at worst</em>, and usually had the technological advantage. Nobody ever had a bigger, badder ship than the Enterprise. And again, at the time, nobody had bigger, badder ships than the American Armed Forces, either. The US wasn't the underdog, so neither was the Enterprise.</p>
<p>Zip forward 18 real years and 76 fictional years to The Next Generation. Again, it is science fiction written for its own time. The once-vicious rivalry with the Klingons has cooled to nothing; instead, the Federation deals with two fascist states, the Romulans and the Cardassians, and an international cartel, the Ferengi Alliance. However, all three of these are rarely anything more than an annoyance. There is nothing in the universe that matches the Enterprise, which traipses from world to world, sometimes appreciating the varied cultures they find and sometimes judging those cultures with their massive technological advantage. They are burdened by the Prime Directive (which Kirk found to be little more than an annoyance) and the ethical considerations of their actions, especially considering the imbalance of power they enjoy.</p>
<p>Sidenote: one could argue that the Borg are TNG's big bad guys, much like the Klingons were original Trek's big bads. You'd be right — at least, insofar as Kirk didn't fight Klingons as much as we like to think he did, and there was only one borg episode in each season of TNG, except the first season, in which there were none. The Borg are an anomaly — a hackneyed, caricatured, and silly anomaly, but an anomaly nonetheless.</p>
<p>Also consider <em>Deep Space Nine</em>, the first Trek franchise started after the fall of the USSR. DS9 takes TNG's re-envisioning of Trek one step further. Now the Federation is the only real superpower in the universe, and is thrust into the position of shepherding fledgling democracies such as the Bajorans from the rapacious hunger of teetering fascist states like the Cardassians. While Sisko and DS9 itself is often outmatched by big, menacing ships, the Federation is not, and what keeps the station alive is Sisko's ever-present ability to get on the phone and have the bulk of the Federation come beat Gul Dukat into paste. In this milleu, much of DS9 considers to what extent the Federation should involve itself in other states' internal affairs, given that its very presence changes the political landscape ("The problem is Earth!"). The show examines and challenges issues of sovereignty, terrorism, and religion. It was Trek for the 90s.</p>
<p>...that is, until the Dominion muscled in and stripped any semblance of relevance from the show, turning into a highly entertaining by thematically dead pot-boiler.</p>
<p>Now, I didn't watch Voyager or Enterprise. Whether they follow the other series' trend of producing speculative fiction that matters to their audience or go the way of the movies, I have no idea.</p>
<h2>Trek on the Big Screen</h2>
<p>We might also briefly consider the Trek movies, which have an incredibly wide spread of artistic success. The first was straight-up speculative fiction, and redid what the original series did very well: awe in the face of a vast and incredible universe. And it tanked. As a result, Roddenberry was pulled from the sequels.</p>
<p><em>Wrath of Khan</em> smashed into theaters with high-action swashbuckling in space, bringing back a well-remembered antagonist from the series, conveniently missing any of the thematic trappings he previously possessed. And what happens? A crippled Enterprise faces off against another Federation ship, itself not crippled, commanded by an ubermensch. That's right: they're the underdogs. Harnessing the underdog myth, <em>Khan</em> was tons of fun, thematically dead, and a box-office success. In <em>Search for Spock</em>, Kirk and the crew have to, well, search for Spock, but the Federation itself tries to stop them. Voila, the protagonists are underdogs again! Then, it's a skeleton crew on the Enterprise against a Klingon bird of prey. Double-win! (Star Trek III is the only successful and critically-aclaimed odd-numbered movie.) Then comes four, where the crew start off as fugitives from the Federation, then time-travel back to the 80s. They are fish-out-of-water, which is sort of the comedic brother of action-adventure's underdog, and the movie is also a success.</p>
<p>Such strings of success can't last forever, of course, but that wouldn't stop the makers of Trek movies to abandon the underdog theme. In <em>The Final Frontier</em>, of course, the crew of the Enterprise goes up against <em><strong>God</strong></em>, or at least, an unreasonable facsimile thereof. In <em>The Undiscovered Country</em>, Kirk and Spock are thrown into a Klingon jail, and later attacked by an unbeatable cloak-and-shoot Klingon warbird. You have the Borg in <em>First Contact</em>, the Son'a in <em>Insurrection</em>, an ineffectively-scary-Picard-clone-boy in <em>Nemesis</em>.</p>
<p>Tangent: You might notice I skipped <em>Generations</em> in there. If <em>Generations</em> had a coherent plot, I could draw a conclusion from it. However, since it doesn't, I can't, so we're just skipping over it.</p>
<p>In many ways, you could lay the blame for the turning of Trek nostalgia into a never-ending underdog-fest at the feet of the movies. You'd be right, but it wouldn't be as damning a criticism as you might think. This is because the Trek television formula of thinly-skinned speculative fiction aimed at current events simply doesn't translate to the big screen. The production cycle for an effects-driven feature film, for one, is simply too long. Certainly there are speculative fiction films that comment on the present day, but they look more like <em>Gattaca</em> than <em>Star Trek</em>. Or to look at it another way, the budget for a effects-driven feature film necessitate a broad audience, and there, well, <em>isn't</em> a broad audience for speculative fiction. (Perhaps there <em>could</em> be, but that's a totally different topic.) And, since the television formula for Trek doesn't work on the big screen, they have to go with something else... and nothing draws in an audience like an underdog story.</p>
<h2>And Now...</h2>
<p>Which brings us to <em>Star Trek</em> by JJ Abrams, a man who has produced lots of properties, lots of money, and very very little subtext. In Abrams' hands, I foresee a string of fun, exciting, successful Trek movies that say nothing. We will see the completion of the decades-long process of turning Star Trek from speculative fiction into space opera, systematically picking up everything that Trek ever said, taking it out behind the woodshed, and quietly strangling it until it goes limp. But if it wasn't Abrams, it would be somebody else. Star Trek isn't <em>Star Trek</em> when it's on the big screen, and probably can't be, even if it wants to.</p>
<p><em>Star Trek</em> dissolving into a fun and witless commodity does not mean, however, that we can't have other properties that don't go the same route, though. There's hope yet. The first step is putting down the underdog pipe and stepping up to the reality that America and Americans, yes, even you, have some significant power in this world and a responsibility to use that power wisely. The stories that go along with this, the stories that allow us to talk about how to do right by the world, can be just as engaging as underdog stories.</p>
<p>We can tell stories like <em>Schindler's List</em>, about the path to realizing that you aren't the underdog, that you have considerable privileges compared to other people, and that means that not only can you make a difference, but you ought to.</p>
<p>We can tell stories like <em>Charlie Wilson's War</em>, about stumbling onto making a difference and how horrendously complicated it can be.</p>
<p>We can tell stories like <em>The West Wing</em>, where the vast and complicated world intersects with our own, internal and personal lives, and somehow we need to find a path that may not be the <em>right</em> path as judged by history, but is the path that lets us not hate ourselves.</p>
<p>We can tell stories like <em>Castle</em>, where people who aren't politicians or civil servants step up to do the right thing.</p>
<p>We can tell stories like <em>Forgetting Sarah Marshall</em>, for crissakes, where nobody is a bad guy but everybody has problems to overcome, and if we help each other get our heads out of our asses, we might just make the world a better place.</p>
<p>We don't need bloodthirsty invaders, corporate overlords, or shadowy conspiracies to produce situations where we can make a difference. We don't need to be the chosen one or bound by duty or have our family slaughtered by the badguys to be able to make a difference. Just being human and living on Earth gives us opportunities every day to be good people. We should tell stories about that. It can't be that hard.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/222#commentsPublishingMon, 11 May 2009 20:32:37 +0000joshroby222 at http://joshroby.comRookhttp://joshroby.com/node/221
<p>I spent a little less than an hour in Illustrator today, reminding myself I am not Daniel Solis. I did, however, end up with this, which I am rather fond of:</p>
<p><img src="http://kallistipress.com/downloads/rook.gif" /></p>
http://joshroby.com/node/221#commentsPublishingThu, 09 Apr 2009 22:01:10 +0000joshroby221 at http://joshroby.comLittle Game Chef '09 — Burn, Midnight Seahorse!http://joshroby.com/node/219
<p>Graham has announced <a href="http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=8959">the design parameters for "Little Game Chef"</a> on story-games.com.</p>
<blockquote><p>THEME<br />
The theme is immersion.</p>
<p>INGREDIENTS<br />
Write a immersive game incorporating three of the following ingredients:<br />
* Burn.<br />
* Horse.<br />
* Midnight.<br />
* Sea.</p></blockquote>
<p>Submissions need to be uploaded to Graham's server in <em>one week</em>, midnight (Britain-time) on the 29th.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/219#commentsGaming CultureOther People's GamesPublishingRPG TheoryThu, 19 Mar 2009 23:14:11 +0000joshroby219 at http://joshroby.comWatch Solis create the Do:PotFT Coverhttp://joshroby.com/node/217
<p>These are just fantastic and fascinating to watch (and brilliant marketing):</p>
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-bDqXYpHBHs&hl=en&fs=1" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-bDqXYpHBHs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aBpgROpC68w&hl=en&fs=1" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aBpgROpC68w&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hgjX_T0h_4c&hl=en&fs=1" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hgjX_T0h_4c&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-ui8ZLEUv3E&hl=en&fs=1" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-ui8ZLEUv3E&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>http://joshroby.com/node/217#commentsOther People's GamesPublishingWed, 18 Mar 2009 00:49:26 +0000joshroby217 at http://joshroby.comRaceFail '09 and Kallisti Presshttp://joshroby.com/node/216
<p>So there's been a big <em>thing</em> over the internets recently, and a lot of people have become very angry over some really stupid things that some other people have said. Specifically, those things have been about race and the depictions thereof in science fiction and fantasy. At this point, so many stupid things have been said that it's far beyond my ability to itemize them. Suffice to say: there's a lot of white guys in sf/f — both in the fiction and in the publishing industry that produces the fiction — and there's a lot of other folks who'd like to see themselves in sf/f — both in and out of the fiction. Which you'd think would be a pretty straightforward proposition with some immediate support, even from white guys. Apparently not so much.</p>
<p>So this is my very small contribution to the <em>thing</em> (which cannot even be said to be a debate at this point). This white guy would like to see some more diversity in sf/f, and when I write and publish, there will be (and has been) characters who are not white guys who are more than token color in the background. I'm not going to wade into the crazy that is the blood-orgy internet dogpile that is RaceFail '09, because I'm not equipped to do much good there, so I will, outside of this post, confine my efforts to what I produce. That is, I wager, the most effective thing that I can do.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/216#commentsKallisti Press NewsPublishingMon, 09 Mar 2009 16:46:29 +0000joshroby216 at http://joshroby.comMy Problem with Fantasy Literaturehttp://joshroby.com/node/214
<p>Alejandro recently emailed me:<br />
<em>When we first met you expressed a disdain for fantasy novels. I told you about how "A Game of Thrones" is good and different. You said, and I quote, "No." Okay, please express to me what it is that you dislike about the fantasy literary genre, and why.</em></p>
<p>So my problem with the "fantasy literary genre" is that it's not especially, well, literary. While there are certainly exceptions, the vast, vast swaths of "fantasy literature" are more accurately described as fantasy <em>pulps</em>. What's the difference between literature and pulps?</p>
<p>Literature is created out of a desire for artistic expression, commentary on life, and contributing to humanity's understanding of itself. It's part of a giant, centuries-spanning dialogue that informs our identity as a species. Yeah, this is all high-minded, but really, it boils down to this: if the author sat down and wrote something they thought was important and worth others' time, it's literature.</p>
<p>The pulps, by contrast, are written purely for your entertainment. The author sat down and tried to figure out what you would like, and then tried her level best to serve you exactly that on a silver platter. There's no attempt to communicate there, nothing that the author thinks is important. The book or short story or whatever is purely intended to allow you to spend time enjoyably. It's fluff.</p>
<p>What's so bad about the pulps, then? Aren't they just innocuous entertainment? There are two answers to this. First, yes: that's exactly what they are, and there is nothing <em>wrong</em> about that — there's also nothing really laudable about it, either. Secondly, however, there is a very large difference between participating in a dialogue through the written word and consuming a product designed to make you feel good. They are, really, fundamentally, completely different things that share superficial similarities. It's all just reading, right? Wrong. When you read literature, you are a participant; when you read pulps, you are a consumer. An example is probably in order.</p>
<p>When you read Umberto Eco's <em>Name of the Rose</em>, there's a passage in which a young monk is dazzled by the sacred architecture of a monastery he is visiting, and he itemizes how the numbers of sides or number of towers and so on betray hidden meanings: One steeple for the monotheistic god, two doors for the two testaments of the bible, three towers for the Holy Trinity, four walls for the four books of the gospel, and so on. The thing is, he goes from one to twelve, and has a special, arcane meaning for each number... which means it doesn't really matter how many sides the building has; however many sides it does have, it will "mean" something. Eco is showing the reader that meaning is as much a product of the person who interprets a work as it is in the person who created the work. As you read <em>Name of the Rose</em>, Eco is talking to you, telling you that you are creating the story as much as he is. You can agree, you can disagree, whatever, but you're a participant whichever you do.</p>
<p>When you read George R. R. Martin's <em>A Game of Thrones</em>, you have a very different reading experience. Within the first page or so, you are assaulted with strange words and concepts, none of which are really explained. It's been a while since I read it, but one example I remember is when a character "waits three candlewidths" or something similarly arcane. This is thrust at you without context, but if you are the sort of reader Martin expects you to be — adolescent, introspective, considering yourself to be a little smarter than most of your peers, and versed in medieval and fantasy tropes — you will figure out "for yourself" that the culture the character comes from marks time by the melting down of candles. And you can give yourself a little pat on the back for proving to yourself that you really are a smart fellow. Which is exactly what Martin wants you to do, and is what he planned for your reading experience when he wrote that. You're his puppet. Now, certainly there is always some expectation on the part of the author as to the reading experience of the reader, but Martin is so cynical in his use and abuse of this exchange that I nearly stopped reading <em>Thrones</em> about twenty pages in because I was sick to death of these little nuggets. It was like Martin was patting my head every half-page and telling me how clever I was. I was supposed to be a consumer, and just sit back and enjoy the experience of being so damned clever. Of course, that experience was completely artificial, so how clever was I, really? Not very.</p>
<p>Now, there are more honest fantasy novels out there — Martin is a hoary old warhorse of the fantasy genre, and knows it a bit too well — and in these honest fantasy novels, you have an author who has thought of something that is <em>really cool</em> and wants to share it with you. I just finished reading <em>His Majesty's Dragon</em> by Naomi Novik, and this is a good example of this. In super-short-form, Novik thought it would be <em>really cool</em> to pair Horatio Hornblower tallships with dragons of mythology. So you have the British fighting off Napoleon with ships of the line in the channel and dragon-riding aviators above. All of this is a pretty entertaining read, but at the end of the day, Novik has not communicated anything to me outside of, "Hey, isn't this <em>really cool</em>?" and I as the reader really have no part in any dialogue. There is no thesis to share, there's just her opinion on the cool-factor of dragons with Napoleonic manners. No characters grow or change, no decisive action is taken regarding any issue, in short nothing happens thematically.</p>
<p>Now, after all of that, answer #1 to "what's wrong with pulps?" still holds true. Nothing — it's mere entertainment, nothing more, and can even be implemented well and with flair. There is such a thing as good pulp (of which <em>His Majesty's Dragon</em> is a good example), but it is a wholly different thing than literature. The conflation of the two ("Oh, you liked <em>Breakfast of Champions</em>? You know what is also a really good book? <em>Pelican Brief</em>!") does tend to drive me batty.</p>
<p>However, there is also pulp like Martin's: manipulative, cynical, mercenary, pulp that makes me just another dumb geek. If that wasn't enough of an insult on its own, this sort of bad pulp works by coopting the tropes of actual literature that preceded it: <em>The Chronicles of Narnia</em>, <em>I, Robot</em>, <em>The Wizard of Earthsea</em>, <em>Frankenstein</em>, and so on. Books that helped establish the fantasy and science fiction genre by telling stories that were worth reading, not because they killed time in an enjoyable fashion, but because when you read them, you got participate in the dialogue that formed them. Which makes this stuff cheap knock-offs produced in the hopes that you won't notice the difference.</p>
<p>So my problem with fantasy literature? With a few exceptions, it's either just fluff, or it's downright insulting.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/214#commentsPublishingFri, 09 Jan 2009 20:43:25 +0000joshroby214 at http://joshroby.comBoard game Android has a trailer.http://joshroby.com/node/213
<p><a href="http://new.fantasyflightgames.com">Fantasy Flight Games</a> has produced a <a href="http://app.fantasyflightgames.com/android_trailer.mov">trailer</a> for their board game <a href="http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=68&amp;enmi=Android">Android</a>. How cool is that? And oh my god, so pretty!</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/213#commentsOther People's GamesPublishingThu, 08 Jan 2009 17:44:45 +0000joshroby213 at http://joshroby.comAgora 3.0 Rules — 12,000 wordshttp://joshroby.com/node/206
<p>The complete rules of Agora 3.0, first draft, run at 12,000 words and 33 pages. That's without examples.</p>
<p>Mostly I'm posting this for comparison once I finish writing the examples...</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/206#commentsAgoraPublishingTue, 16 Sep 2008 18:18:30 +0000joshroby206 at http://joshroby.comWick on Drifting HotBhttp://joshroby.com/node/203
<p>John Wick is doing <a href="http://wickedthought.livejournal.com/782611.html">some interesting things</a> for his game, <em>Houses of the Blooded</em>. He's planning weekly vcasts for the game, which he released a couple months ago. This first vcast, and hopefully later ones as well, cracks open the game and shows you all the many different things you can do by totally changing everything. This week, it's turning the setting inside-out and placing the Ven in polynesia, or a post-apocalyptic mesoamerica, or <em>Dune</em> or <em>Amber</em>. Each setting-shift is described, not only by the adjustments made in the setting but also in the rules — John is presenting <em>Houses</em> as a toolbox of many possibilities, even if the toolbox comes with a roadmap inside. It's a very intriguing concept, and I'm hoping to see more.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/203#commentsOther People's GamesPublishingMon, 15 Sep 2008 15:18:41 +0000joshroby203 at http://joshroby.comBloodfire: Rotating GM prods PCshttp://joshroby.com/node/200
<p>I think I nailed down situation creation for Bloodfire, at least in incredibly rough form. It was a matter of taking <em>nearly every other element</em> designed thus far and knitting them together with purposefully-perverse procedural steps. Flags lead to situation lead to character development lead to flags.</p>
<p>Now to hammer out how it works in the step-by-step, without relying on "now do that GM magic thing."</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/200#commentsPublishingFri, 08 Aug 2008 02:36:26 +0000joshroby200 at http://joshroby.comRoadblockhttp://joshroby.com/node/199
<p>Have hit a problem in Secret Project: Bloodfire.</p>
<p>I know how the social interaction works at the table.<br />
I know how stats work.<br />
I know how character generation works.<br />
I know how character development works.</p>
<p>...I just don't know what you do in the game.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/199#commentsPublishingTue, 05 Aug 2008 15:35:31 +0000joshroby199 at http://joshroby.comDeja Vuhttp://joshroby.com/node/198
<p>Writing the Agora 3.0 rules. Every once in a while, I think to myself, "I feel like I've written these rules a dozen times already." And then I realize: "Oh wait, that's because <em>I have</em>."</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/198#commentsAgoraPublishingMon, 04 Aug 2008 04:28:26 +0000joshroby198 at http://joshroby.comRagnar Caskbellyhttp://joshroby.com/node/197
<p><a href="http://joshroby.livejournal.com/10358.html">I made a 4E character.</a></p>
http://joshroby.com/node/197#commentsOther People's GamesPublishingWed, 23 Jul 2008 16:41:08 +0000joshroby197 at http://joshroby.comThe Challengehttp://joshroby.com/node/196
<p>Design a game — for best results, one that reliably produces fun play. Let's say the game is a 98-page PDF download or so.<br />
Distill from that game a one-shot scenario and an abbreviated rule set that you can use to play through that scenario. Let's say the distillation is a 16-page PDF download.<br />
Release the distillation for free, sell the full game for something reasonable ($10 download, cost-plus-ten Lulu print).</p>
<p>Sure, you could do this for lots of games. But for many of those games, the distilled one-shot would pretty much give away all the "secrets" of the full game. In other words, you'd be able to extrapolate the full game from the one-shot. Don't mistake me, I'm not thinking in terms of "people could cheat and not have to pay money for the game!" I'm thinking in terms of complexity and creative output. The trick of this is to make the full game sufficiently complex that it can not be contained in the distillation, but the powerful play experience, or at least one dose of it, must be portable enough to "fit" into the distillation.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/196#commentsPublishingRPG TheoryTue, 22 Jul 2008 23:12:23 +0000joshroby196 at http://joshroby.comThe Long, Dark Teatime of Game Designhttp://joshroby.com/node/186
<p>Played the sixth session of the Agora v2.8 rules this evening. We managed three scenes in three hours, which is better (we've been managing two scenes in three hours) but not where I want the game to be. For all of its complexity in play, I am trying to make it relatively quick -- I want scenes to range from 20-40 minutes, not an hour.</p>
<p>And so this is the place, right, in game design where you have a relatively functional set of mechanics, but it's not firing on all the cylinders. You playtest and playtest and playtest, making rules tweaks and adjustments, and you keep plugging away at the playtests, and eventually you start to lose sight of the target. The game generates <em>play</em>, sure, and you become very familiar with the type of play that the game is (presently) producing... but that's not <em>it</em>, and you're not really sure what "it" is supposed to feel like any more.</p>
<p>And then you wonder if there really is an "it" that you were aiming for when you wrote the original version of the rules <em>three years ago</em>, because at this point you can't remember what the impetus was, except that part of the rules started out as a little mental exercise, a joke really, and kind of grew from that, and maybe that's all the game really is: a joke grown out of proportion. Was there ever a game? Was there even an idea of what the game would look like?</p>
<p>And you look at your sales record, and you look at all the avalanche of games that are now being produced, and you wonder if the effort you're putting into this is worth any expected payoff — not just in terms of sales, but in play and players and fellow-gamers and sharing something that you think is cool. Because, if you can't remember what that thing was that you want to share, what are you even working towards, here?</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>And then you notice that it's two in the morning, and you should probably be in bed already, and you should take it on faith that you're not a moron and there is an experience that your game is pointing at, and you're probably missing the forest for the trees at this point. The playtesters keep coming back, right, so the game is entertaining enough — just with rough spots that need smoothing out. And after the playtest, you had some really thought-provoking discussion and you took good notes and really, you should come back to this in the morning with fresh eyes.</p>
<p>And you tell yourself that, but you don't get up and go to bed. You sit and you stare at your notes and the character sheets, and you keep wondering: <em>what is this game supposed to do?</em></p>
http://joshroby.com/node/186#commentsAgoraPublishingTue, 08 Apr 2008 08:02:13 +0000joshroby186 at http://joshroby.comSons of Liberty First Printing Arrives!http://joshroby.com/node/181
<p>The first printing of <em>Sons of Liberty</em> just arrived, and I'm really digging on how they look. Here, let me gush and share:</p>
<table>
<tr>
<td colspan="3" align="center"><a href="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Front.jpg"><img src="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Front%20Thumb.jpg" /></a>
</td>
<td colspan="3" align="center"><a href="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Back.jpg"><img src="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Back%20Thumb.jpg" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="center">
<a href="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Campbell.jpg"><img src="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Campbell%20Thumb.jpg" /></a>
</td>
<td colspan="2" align="center">
<a href="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Revere.jpg"><img src="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Revere%20Thumb.jpg" /></a>
</td>
<td colspan="2" align="center">
<a href="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Allen.jpg"><img src="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Book%20Allen%20Thumb.jpg" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>(Click on any for a ridiculously larger image.)</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/181#commentsPublishingSons of LibertyThu, 24 Jan 2008 19:48:22 +0000joshroby181 at http://joshroby.comSons of Liberty Proofs!http://joshroby.com/node/180
<p>Yesterday I came home to find the proofs for <em>Sons of Liberty</em>, and they looked pretty good! To share the excitement (and gloat a little), here's a couple little pics:</p>
<p><img src="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Proof%201.JPG" /><br />
Yes, that big block of text on the bottom of the credits page is all the playtesters!</p>
<p><img src="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/SoL%20Proof%202.JPG" /><br />
They asked for a diagram of play; they got one. Ph3ar my Illustrator skizillz!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, they didn't send me a bound proof, which would have been nice, but I did review for those last remaining typos, checked the trim and bleeds, and saw what the paper stock looked like.</p>
<p>We start printing tomorrow!</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/180#commentsPublishingSons of LibertyFri, 11 Jan 2008 03:46:20 +0000joshroby180 at http://joshroby.comSons of Liberty Preorder Opens!http://joshroby.com/node/178
<p><img src="http://joshroby.com/images/SoL/SoLad%20Liberty%20Tree.gif" width="200" class="thumb" style="float:left; margin-right:10px" /><br />
Have you ever had Alexander Hamilton wind up your clockwork power armor, jump out of Thomas Paine's ornithopter, and land in the middle of the Battle of Yorktown to punch General Cornwallis in the face?</p>
<p>No?</p>
<p>Well... would you like to?</p>
<p>The <em>Sons of Liberty</em> Preorder is now open. Take on the role of the Founding Fathers to kick ass and take names for truth, justice, and the American way in the only Roleplaying Game of Freedom and Badassery.</p>
<div style="float:right; margin:10px" >
<strong>Physical Specifications</strong>
<ul title="Physical Specifications">
<li>144 pages</li>
<li>6" x 9" format</li>
<li>Softcover</li>
<li>Perfect Bound</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>The game's fast-paced card mechanics ensure high-action madness and revolutionary heroics. If you are playing Benjamin Franklin and you aren't swinging an electrified kite over your head to clear the streets of redcoats, then you are playing it <em>wrong</em>.</p>
<p>View the game's <a href="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/patriotsheet.pdf">Patriot Sheet</a>, <a href="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/torysheet.pdf">Tory Play Aid</a>, and <a href="http://joshroby.com/downloads/SoL/objectivessheet.pdf">Objectives Sheet</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://joshroby.com/ads/SoL/SoLad%20Minuteman.gif" width="200" class="thumb" style="float:right; margin-left:10px" /><br />
Play Sons of Liberty in three different modes: Battle Mode, Campaign Mode, and Versus Mode.</p>
<p>In <strong>Battle Mode</strong>, you and three or more friends play<br />
through one secret “battle” of the Sons of Liberty. One player takes on the role of the Tories, while everyone else picks a Patriot figure to portray. A single battle takes between two and three hours to play.</p>
<p>In <strong>Campaign Mode</strong>, you and your friends string together a series of battles to tell the whole, secret story of the American Revolution. Each battle features different Patriot figures, and the role of Tory player is traded to a new player each time. Scheduling is simple since the group of players need not be the same for each battle – if Jim can’t make it one evening, there’s just one less Patriot and more badassery for everybody else.</p>
<p>In <strong>Versus Mode</strong>, you and one other player can each take on the role of one of the Sons of Liberty after the Revolution has been won. Once comrades in arms who founded a nation, the task of actually building that nation often set these men and women at odds. It was their impassioned struggles with each other that formed the nation we know today.</p>
<p><em>Sons of Liberty</em> will be released on President's Day, February 15th, Election Year 2008 at OrcCon. Preorder and receive the Full PDF Preview in January in addition to the softcover in February!</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/178#commentsKallisti Press NewsPublishingSons of LibertyThu, 15 Nov 2007 06:09:41 +0000joshroby178 at http://joshroby.comSons of Liberty Updatehttp://joshroby.com/node/171
<p>I realized a couple days ago that I had hit the point in developing <em>Sons of Liberty</em> that I needed to see it in layout to keep developing the manuscript effectively. So last night I sat down and put together a 'starter' layout, and flowed a little over 80 pages of the book. Since all of the art in the book is square (for eventual potential as art on a custom deck of cards), I just dropped 4x4, 2x2, and 1x1 frames into the pages to adjust flow.</p>
<p>Then I placed actual art into the frames, cause, hey, why not? They were on my hard drive anyway.</p>
<p>I was surprised by how quickly and easily all the disparate pieces came together to make a very good design draft. It's always encouraging to find out you're farther along than you thought you were. ;)</p>
<p>I'm going to fiddle a bit, and then I may have some sample spreads to show off.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/171#commentsPublishingSons of LibertyWed, 08 Aug 2007 16:33:35 +0000joshroby171 at http://joshroby.comHow to Write an RPGhttp://joshroby.com/node/170
<p>The following is a souped-up version of a comment I made on <a href="http://story-games.com/forum">Story Games</a> which a lot of folks have said a lot of nice things about. I'm reproducing it here (and embellishing it a bit) in the hopes that other folks can get some use out of it.</p>
<p>The following will sound like 9th grade English advice on constructing an essay; it's only marginally related. This is planning and constructing a <em>book</em>, which is way the hell more complicated. This isn't about <em>designing</em> a roleplaying game. This assumes that you've already designed the game. This is about <em>writing</em> the game, taking the design and presenting it in a way that's comprehensible to people who are not inside your head like you are.</p>
<p>You probably have your setting and rules written down somewhere. That is not your manuscript. Those are <em>notes</em>. Now that you have completed notes, you need to write the manuscript. Before you write the manuscript, you need to plan the manuscript.</p>
<p>(Doing the following on index cards is really helpful; you can also do it on a word processor, or even in a plain old notebook -- but you'll use a lot, a lot of pages and get hand cramps.)</p>
<p>Write down a list of all the things that you'd need to explain to your intended audience*. This is not a list of rules, although the different rules will probably be items on the list. Then start shifting around the items on the list so they're in the order that you'd present them in. After you think you're done, go down the list and for each item think about what other things need to be explained before that item. Make sure they're already on the list, above that item. When you're done, you've got a procedure to teach the game.</p>
<p>Now chunk the list into sections. Some of the items will look like they sort of 'belong' to a previous item: make the belonger a subitem of the belongee. Some of the items will look like they sort of belong together as a group. Create a new item for the group, give it a temporary name, and make all the others subitems of the group name. You'll need to go through the list a few times. You'll get groups of groups, and subitems of subitems, and at some point, they'll all clump up into a reasonable number of supergroups. Eventually, these groupings will become chapters, but don't think of them as such yet, because you'll end up making assumptions. You have a rough sketch of what the book will look like.</p>
<p>Now go through the list and use indents to indicate main topics and supporting topics. Any good word processor can do this. If you can use 'Harvard' outlining, with roman numerals and then a/b/c and then 1/2/3, you'll be golden. Eventually, those become part/chapter/section/segment distinctions (with roman numerals being chapters, lowercase alpha being sections, arabic numbers being segments, and so on). Right now, just sort of get them organized. Now you have an outline.</p>
<p>Extra bonus: go through the whole list and write down, in one short paragraph, what gets explained in that section. This may very well make you realize that you need to add an item or two somewhere.</p>
<p><strong>Payoff:</strong> You have a nice, fleshed out outline. Now you can write <em>any section</em>, in <em>any order</em>, whichever section appeals to you when you sit down at your desk. Tick them off as you go. Write all the sections separately and in different word processing files. You'll thread them together <em>later</em>. Do that only after you've written the vast majority of the sections (at least 90%). Then read it through yourself; you'll notice a couple bits that you left out. Write those as sections and insert them somewhere appropriate in the outline and the compiled manuscript. Then you will have a first draft, which you can hand to somebody else who can read it and tell you which bits don't make sense.</p>
<p><strong>Super Awesome Payoff:</strong> Using a word processor or layout program that actually uses styles, you can define styles for different levels of headers. There are chapter headers, section headers, segment headers, and so on. How do you know what level header you should use? Refer to your outline and what level of indent that bit is at. You should be able to do this uniformly down the whole outline. Not only do you have regular styling, you also have a table of contents!</p>
<p>For an example of this in action, see <a href="http://wickedthought.livejournal.com">John Wick's Livejournal</a>, where he is posting the sections of <em>Houses of the Blooded</em> as he writes them. Each of those sections, and what is covered in each section, is coming off of an outline like the one I described above.</p>
<p>This is a <em>lot</em> of work, but the trick is to plan it and chunk it out so that it never feels like a lot of work. Whenever you sit down, you should be sitting down to write just one section -- a page or three. You will be astounded at how quickly you tick off the items on your outline.</p>
<p>Then it's time for somebody else to look at it and tell you where it doesn't make sense, and then you can start <em>playtesting!</em></p>
<p>* You have an intented audience, even if you haven't identified it yet. What kind of person do you want to get your game to? Who do you want to play it? That's your intended audience. Write <em>for them</em>.</p>
http://joshroby.com/node/170#commentsPublishingMon, 06 Aug 2007 23:29:26 +0000joshroby170 at http://joshroby.com